


scorpio

by hojichadust



Series: The Sensations Zodiac [2]
Category: VIXX
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-26
Updated: 2015-05-26
Packaged: 2018-04-01 09:05:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4013857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hojichadust/pseuds/hojichadust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><b>title:</b> scorpio<br/><b>pairing:</b> neo<br/><b>rating:</b> R for language, mature themes and sexual content<br/><b>length:</b> 5.1k<br/><b>warnings:</b> genderswap (fem!slash neo)<br/><b>a/n:</b> this is a part of <a href="http://hojichadust.livejournal.com/2568.html">The Sensations Zodiac</a> collection, and was loosely inspired by <i>dallas buyers club.</i> this is for sydney, the toughest and bravest girl i know.<br/><b>disclaimer:</b> i have never read a single neo fic in my life so if something similar's been done i am deeply sorry</p>
            </blockquote>





	scorpio

**dallas, 1985**

Suddenly, the steady beeping of the heart monitor turns frantic and erratic.

Hakyeon’s neck practically snaps when she turns her head. “No,” she says. She gets up from her chair and grips the handle bars lining the bed. “No,” she hisses. “No, don’t you dare.”

The first nurse comes in, then the next one, and the next one, as if choreographed, and maybe it is, maybe this state of emergency is one they know better than their own heartbeats now, so that it’s always the first one that elbows Hakyeon aside while the rest swarm the bed. Strangers barely human to Hakyeon with their faces masked and bodies hidden in the unflattering blue fabric of their hospital scrubs, somehow in charge of the lives of these real human beings, slipping away in these cotton beds like a flame reaching the stub of the candle. Gloved latex fingers dance over the gaunt, pale figure in the bed, ugly like centipede legs. They talk in a language Hakyeon doesn’t understand.

“Don’t you dare,” Hakyeon says, raising her voice, and the doctor comes in, the most inhuman of them all, and says something like get her out of here and the last nurse to follow grabs her arms. She’s surprisingly strong, but Hakyeon is surprisingly angry. 

“Don’t you dare! You fucking bitch!” Hakyeon screams, as the nurse fights to drag her out. “Fuck! Taekwoon! Don’t you dare! You hear me? Don’t

**◄◄**

Ten years ago when they were stuck together on the top of the ferris wheel, and Hakyeon had drunk too much beer and eaten too many churros and was getting real dizzy looking through the glass under her feet, and Taekwoon was this weird girl who shared a mutual friend from cram school and had bumped into them earlier, appearing suddenly like a mirage and staying to hover like a moon suddenly larger and brighter when it sits on the horizon, quiet and intimidating and fascinating all at once.

“I have to pee,” Hakyeon groaned, crossing her legs and trying to look down to see how much longer it would take for the workers to get the ride working again.

Taekwoon wasn’t looking down. She didn’t even seem fazed by the fact that they were stranded in the middle of the sky, for god knows how much longer. She was staring out, at the rest of the carnival, the flashing lights and festive colours and enough popcorn and candy apples stands to satisfy the sharpest sweet tooth.

“You’re weird,” Taekwoon murmured, her first words all night.

Hakyeon stared. She was the weird one.

“Most people don’t smile so quickly at me when they first meet me. So you have to be.”  
Taekwoon was one of those people who you could tell didn’t like dressing in anything other than black, or dark blue, or hues of grey. Her knit sweater top was the colour of charcoal and her jeans were black, as were her combat boots. Her shoulder-length bob was its natural shade of black, and framed her small eyes and massive cheekbones. Her face itself reminded Hakyeon of the moon, in its roundness and paleness, and through this became likened as this lovely alien thing whose beauty you could only admire from afar. She looked in general too uncomfortable to do much of anything.

But Hakyeon was always good at taking things in stride. “Yeah, well, most people don’t say weird things like that to people they’ve just met, so you must be weird too.”

“I already figured I was.” Taekwoon looked at her. “Not like you, though.”

Not like her. Not like Hakyeon, and all her friends, loud and practically uncontrollable, like a hive of bees or downtown traffic. Not even like their mutual friend, the one who had caught and introduced Taekwoon, who was quiet too, a gentle lily frond swaying in the ripples of the pond. Taekwoon was of the different sort, a fox in the bushes, neither the top nor the bottom of the food chain, laying low and taking in her surroundings with careful shrewdness, always assessing when to dig below and when to leap up.

And maybe Hakyeon was weird for finding that interesting. 

“I like something different once in a while,” Hakyeon said, with the same smile she’d used when they first met. “Don’t you?”

Taekwoon studied her for a long time, quiet. The ferris wheel suddenly creaked with movement again, and Hakyeon nearly sighed in relief because her legs had gone numb from crossing them so tightly in an attempt to prevent peeing herself.

“Maybe,” Taekwoon said. “But I’ve never

**►►**

like the one at First Baptist, only twice as tall. Stretched from the floor to the ceiling almost,” Hakyeon described, raising her hands as if to paint a picture in the air. “That big old thing, that massive glass colouring book, all for a bunch of dumb kids who lied their way into the army only to get their asses shot five minutes into the game.”

“Plenty of dumb kids all over the world who want to make it big in the history books,” Taekwoon said, thumb stroking back and forth over the ring on her index finger. Lying in her bed with Hakyeon sitting in a chair next to her, she was like a thousand year-old book, whole passages of her water-stained and faded away, pages of her crumbling if you tried to touch her, a mere shade of what she once was. Her eyes were glazed with a morphine-induced high, which was the only reason she was listening to Hakyeon so calmly. “I think it’s sad. Those poor boys.”

“Yeah, well, the whole fucking war was one big sob story. It’s the same shit every year round Thanksgiving.”

“Don’t be so heartless.”

“What? You a sap for tragedies?”

“Of course I am.” Taekwoon’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I thought you knew.”

Hakyeon did know. Of course she did. How could you know a person, every fibre of them, the swell of their lips and the most redundant of words made in moments not worth remembering but catalogued anyway, if you didn’t know what was most important, that some people would overturn the earth if it meant never feeling low again, after they’d had a taste of what it meant to be truly awake? 

Hakyeon took Taekwoon’s hand between hers. “I know you’re crazy. You’re the only one who would do all this just to feel like the movies don’t have to end.”

“The lights never go up for me, honey,” Taekwoon said, and she almost smiled, a soft one, but then it was abruptly gone, twisted into a grimace as her lips parted to start coughing.

Coughing fits were regular, and they were never good. But they never lasted this long. Hakyeon frowned when the hacking only got louder instead of going away. “You okay?”

Taekwoon waved her hand dismissively, but she sounded like her lungs were finally disintegrating in their chest and coming up piece by dried-out piece, head twisted away to choke harshly into other hand, ridged spine bent forward. Hakyeon slowly stood up with increasing alarm, panic heightening with the siren that began to wail inside of her head, already reaching for the phone. 

Then Taekwoon stopped, going very still, and she moved her hand away to stare down at a blood-splattered palm.

Suddenly, it was unbearably, incredibly important that Hakyeon remember the exact moment that she finally understood Taekwoon would not walk away if Hakyeon stopped appearing at her front door. It was important that she remember the first time they went out for hamburgers together, the first time they’d tried to fuck at the back of a movie theatre, the first time Hakyeon painted Taekwoon’s toenails, the first time Taekwoon forced her to drink a whole pot of that awful chamomile tea with honey and lemon in it. Suddenly she was drowning, sinking fast, clawing desperately at the surface, vision already blackening around the side. Her heart sank with her.

“Come on,” she said, voice shaking, reaching for her. “We need to take you to the hospital—”

“No, no hospitals,” Taekwoon insisted, voice slurred and drunken, arms heavy as she clumsily shoves Hakyeon’s grip off of her. She’s so out of it that she loses balance when she does, and half-rolls off the bed, hanging from her torso off the side of the mattress.

“Jesus,” Hakyeon breathed, quick to pull her back upright, and when Taekwoon looked up Hakyeon nearly dropped her out of shock, because the moon was breaking, Taekwoon was crying, tears streaming down her face.

“I don’t want to die,” Taekwoon said, voice cracking. 

It was like she’d struck a terrible blow to Hakyeon’s chest, stealing the breath from her and leaving her reeling for air. “You’re not going to die,” Hakyeon said, because it seemed the only thing right to say, even if she couldn’t bring herself to find any faith in it. “Come on, babe, get up, come on, I’ll help you to the car. There, that’s it, let me

**◄◄**

“Come on,” Hakyeon said, using her best cute face, motioning with both hands towards her car, her brand-spanking new car, a sports convertible the colour of cherry-red lipstick, with creamy leather and silver fins and a polished finish. Her seventeenth birthday gift. “Don’t you want to ride in it?”

Taekwoon eyed the car with crossed arms, then Hakyeon. She’d been dragged out with little warning, so she stood only in an oversized Nirvana shirt and ripped cut-off jeans. The curve of her pale legs gleamed like the face of a grandfather clock illuminated by moonlight. Highly distracting.

“You’ve barely had your licence for a month.”

“Yeah, but if we take the 401 we’re set for miles. It’s barely used for anything, it’s a one stretch ride connecting Dallas to Louisiana without a single living soul anywhere in between. They got Highway 30 for folk making that trip now. Come on, tell me you’re not even slightly interested to hear how she purrs?” 

The night wasn’t too hot or too cold, but the mosquitos were out and they were nipping Hakyeon’s neck and legs like she was the only thing worth sucking blood from for miles. It didn’t help the wait for Taekwoon’s response much, but she knew better by now. If she was too pushy or annoying Taekwoon would turn on her heel and just walk home, no preamble. Pushy and annoying sometimes tended to be Hakyeon’s strong suits; ask her anytime and she’ll pronounce she was sacrificing an awful lot for a friendship she wasn’t even sure the other party was fully enthusiastic about.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of being eaten alive by the most blasphemous insect on all of God’s good green earth, Taekwoon finally said, “If you get us in an accident, I’ll kill you first before the injuries do.”

Hakyeon didn’t response, just pumped her fist before giving an enthusiastic whoop. It was dark out, but it wasn’t hard to tell that Taekwoon was trying to swallow down a smile as she approached the passenger side. 

That was Hakyeon’s favourite pastime, now. Trying to get the other to crack a smile. She wasn’t quick to give a giggle at the ridiculous sense of goofy humour most of the teenage boys (and Hakyeon) employed for attention. That time Jaewhan had hung around at Hakyeon’s invitation and left two hours later with his tail between his legs was proof enough of that. It almost became a game, finding the exact edge of the feather that would entice a reaction from her ribs. 

Although she’d used every opportunity to drive this thing the past few days, the leather still smelled pristine and freshly cleaned from the dealership lot. Taekwoon seemed interested enough, despite her best attempts at a poker face. She got into the passenger side and put her seatbelt on and expressionlessly admired the interior and dashboard, eyes concentrated. Hakyeon enjoyed seeing her like this. This was her most animated state, her face sleek and sharp and powerful.

“Pretty, right?” Hakyeon put her keys into the ignition. “Now watch her drive.”

The car revved up deliciously, the engine roaring back in awakening, and Hakyeon peeled out of the beer store parking lot just to hear the tires squeal. Taekwoon grabbed onto the handle of her door to brace herself at the lurch of the turn and shot Hakyeon a glare, which she promptly ignored. 

“Ready?” Hakyeon shouted over the engine. She turned sharply, speeding the fifteen yards it took to drive past the shoe polish factory, through the major intersection in which a left turn would’ve been their route home, and then further, till they were hitting the outskirts of town and Highway 401’s sign was rusting and ready to crash down to a heap, nothing but a stretch of sand and dirt on either side of one very long asphalt strip. 

Hakyeon practically floored on the gas, shooting from 50 to 80 miles an hour in the blink of an eye. The lurch forward from the abrupt pick-up in speed could be felt in the pit of their stomachs. There was no hood to the convertible, either, so the wind started making whipping noises in Hakyeon’s ears as her hair billowed out behind her. 

Taekwoon turned to her and latched a hand onto her elbow, looking, for the first Hakyeon’s ever seen her, uneasy. “What are you doing?” she yelled.

“Going the speed limit!” Hakyeon yelled back gleefully, before looking back at the road and pressing on the gas a little more. She felt Taekwoon’s fingers tightening on her arm, and grinned.

Eighty-five. 

Ninety.

Ninety-five.

One hundred miles per hour. 

“YEAHH!” Hakyeon screamed, adrenaline spitting fire through her veins, the wind in her face was so strong that her eyes were tearing. “YESSS, LET’S GOOO!!! WHOOO!!”

Taekwoon looked at her, and Hakyeon almost laughed at the dumbfounded expression she had on her face, like she’d just realized that this wasn’t actually horrible and she couldn’t believe that she might be enjoying it. And there was something else in her expression too, something like recognition, like she was seeing Hakyeon in some new light, or something. It was a look Hakyeon wasn’t used to, and somewhere deep down in the middle of her gleeful speeding-induced euphoria, she felt something like shakes or bubbles inside of her ribcage. A feeling that only intensified as Taekwoon showed her first ever full-on grin, crescent moon eyes and rows of teeth and everything. In that moment, black hair whipping behind her in the wind and a smile reminiscent of the first rays of sunshine after winter, Taekwoon had never looked more gorgeous. 

“I told you!” Hakyeon screamed, ecstatic, and Taekwoon turned towards the road ahead of them again, still grinning, still gripping Hakyeon’s elbow, and they stayed like that as they kept racing down this abandoned highway, crazy with

**►►**

just get it over with,” Taekwoon said, voice weary.

“Taekwoon,” Hakyeon said, trying hard, so, so hard, to control her anger. Her fists shook where they gripped the sides of her skirt. She felt so inadequate in these moments, like a house cat hissing and pawing at the cage of a lion. “You can’t. You’ve been getting better. I—maybe—maybe you were right, about those vitamins, I don’t know, maybe they were better, but the zidovudine is all we’ve got now and you can’t just—”

“Too late.” Taekwoon settled back into her armchair, her small, thin body nearly disappearing in it. “I already flushed it all down the toilet.”

The next lick of anger that scorches her insides is too strong to swallow, but when Hakyeon opens her mouth, the only thing that comes out is pain. Real, physical pain, because that’s what this was, losing the only girl who ever really mattered. “Oh, Taekwoon,” Hakyeon said, and she felt sick, like she was the one losing in all this.

“I’m done.” Taekwoon closed her eyes. “I’m done now. I’m done fighting. I just want to rest now

**◄◄**

spinning, spinning so much faster than the ceiling fan over their heads, dizzy with booze and ecstasy and lust as the sweat soaked through her tank top and clung to her back, and she was delirious with relief when Taekwoon ripped it off, the top, her shorts, her underwear, all of it, and shoved her down onto the motel desk chair.

Hakyeon watched Taekwoon dropped to her knees in front of her, grabbing Hakyeon’s thighs and spreading her legs apart and up so that they were each draped over both armrests of the chair. She was trembling and panting and so wet she wasn’t sure if she could stand up again. Taekwoon looked at her, took Hakyeon’s left hand suddenly and brought it to her mouth, eyes lidded as she kissed her wrist once. There was a hair tie there, and she bit it between her teeth and pulled it off. Hakyeon didn’t know whether to laugh or slap her with impatience, but she understood, Taekwoon’s hair pulled back into a messy bun, when the other lowered her face between Hakyeon’s legs and kissed her folds right over her clit. 

“Oh, fuck,” Hakyeon groaned, arching her back away from the chair. Taekwoon ate her out like she was in the middle of a passionate kiss, sucking her clit and pushing her tongue deep inside. She pulled her closer by the thighs, let Hakyeon’s shaking legs rest over her shoulders, and reached up to grab Hakyeon’s breast, squeezing, greedy. 

Hakyeon moaned and grabbed the younger’s hair with both hands to push her face closer between her jerking hips. Her body rolled under Taekwoon’s hands and mouth, empty of words, guttural pleading cries spilling from her lips until her body nearly bucks off the chair and she comes with a fervour that’s never achieved when it’s only your own hands bringing you orgasm.

Taekwoon’s not done with her. She throws her on the bed, keeps her bent over with a hand to her neck while two fingers slip into her cunt. She fucks her with her fingers so hard that her hips are bouncing on the mattress top, merciless and feral like a wild animal, and Hakyeon screams herself hoarse as her eyes tear up and her mascara smears on the blankets and around her lids but the thing she feels most is Taekwoon’s hand on her neck, holding her down. She hadn’t expected it, heavy and tight, had never thought Taekwoon capable. It’s too hard to think because Taekwoon’s fingers work her harder than any cock and overhead the ceiling fan continues its slow and unhelpful pace, turning, turning

**►►**

thing is full,” Hakyeon insisted, fuming.

“I hear it’s poison.” Taekwoon picked up a package of sliced rice cakes and put it in her cart. She was hungover, yesterday’s makeup running over dark circles, sunglasses pushing back greasy bangs. “Folk say it makes them sick. We don’t even know if we got the damn placebo anyway.”

“So what exactly are you doing, then?”

Taekwoon was silent for a bit, pushing the cart along the aisles slowly with her weight rested on the handlebar. Hakyeon followed and waited, because even after all this goddamn shit it wasn’t like her to stray away. All this time she’d thought she was the one leading, dragging Taekwoon with her by the forceful grip of the wrist, but she’d been wrong, so so wrong. Taekwoon had always been in control, and Hakyeon had been the eager puppy tugging at the end of the leash. Simple as that.

“There’s this group,” Taekwoon said. “Well, it’s two guys. One man and his he-woman business partner. They’re selling this protein, called peptide T. Some Mexican drug not approved by the FDA. They smuggle it in and give it to everyone who pays membership. Four bills a month.” 

“Four _hundred_ dollars?” Hakyeon repeated. “Honey, don’t tell me you paid for this—”

“It works. The guys who sell it, they’re both positive and they take it too. Said they’ve outlived their life expectancies.”

“It sounds like a fucking scam!”

“They have guys lined up straight through the lot and down the street for this,” Taekwoon said, stopping the cart to give her a hard look. Deteriorating though she was, she was still fierce, someone to be reckoned with. “I waited two hours just to get inside for the paperwork. Something’s gotta be working, or there wouldn’t be so many people trying to get their paws on it.”

“People are desperate, Taekwoon. That’s what dying does. Babe,” Hakyeon said, resting a hand on her shoulder lightly. She lowered her voice, soft, coaxing. “Please. Just try the support group.”

Something dark brewed heavy in Taekwoon’s eyes. It was a look Hakyeon was accustomed to now, one that scared her the first time she saw it, one that broke her the first time it was used on her. She knew what it meant. It meant she was being shut out. It meant she

**◄◄**

east. They got good food in New Orleans, word is. All that good shit like gumbo and crawfish and peach cobbler. Black folk know how to cook real nice there. And they have those pretty old plantation houses where the white slavers used to live, with the big porches and the tall windows and French doors. They look like the White House for Barbie dolls.”

“So only white folk can live there.”

“Maybe. We’ll see.”

They’re drinking in Hakyeon’s car, not parked anywhere special or looking at anything in particular, and the wine is nothing fancy either. Hakyeon had thrown the paper bag away even though any old cop could pass on by and see her and drag her off to sober up in some jail cell instead of trying to drive home. Today the sky has patches of clouds, not moving, just hanging in the sky, like a baby mobile with the little toy stars hanging off of it, like Hakyeon could reach up and touch it if she tried hard enough, it seemed that close. 

She laid her hand on Taekwoon’s thigh, and Taekwoon placed her hand over top, squeezing. It made Hakyeon crazy with joy knowing that that had been an automatic reaction on her part, a natural one, like she’d finally come to accept Hakyeon as something that resembled an extension of her own self, the pinkie finger on her right hand, a piece of her soul fitted to sit right over her heart. She felt, for the first time, fully immersed in Taekwoon’s life. 

“Hey,” Hakyeon said. “Hey, look at me. I love you.”

Taekwoon turned to her, taken aback, her breath gone so shallow that only the finest hairs on Hakyeon’s body would be moved by its exhale. She stayed quiet for so long that Hakyeon began to worry. “Taekwoon?”

“Yeah,” Taekwoon said quietly. “Yeah, I just. I love you, too.”

Maybe she still wasn’t convinced, because she kissed Taekwoon, pulled her into the backseat and pushed her shirt up under her breasts and kissed across her flat stomach, until Taekwoon relaxed with a sigh, and spread her legs apart. There was still no roof on the car but Hakyeon fucked her anyway, manicured nails digging into her thighs, and when it was over Taekwoon snorted and smacked her hand and said _that hurt, you idiot_ , with a fond smile. And it seemed like the only thing that was really missing with everything else already had, the two of them wrapped up in the afterglow so tight you’d need a crowbar to separate them, was

**►►**

all they had. One of the researchers of the hospital sat with me. Went on for hours.”

They sat together, across from each other, Hakyeon’s hands nearly touching Taekwoon’s where she cradled the small plastic prescription bottle in her hands. The coffee table was littered with paper work from the hospital and their own printed research from the local library. They stared down at the little white tablets, silent, feeling like it wasn’t appropriate to talk. As if they were in church or at a funeral. Maybe they were.

“It’s a tester,” Taekwoon said. “That’s all it is. We’re the guinea pigs now.”

She said this casually, her eyes holding no particular emotion in them. She was slipping away again, but then, she’d been slipping away for a while now. Like oil through Hakyeon’s watery fingers. Now the stakes were sitting between them in each and every one of those white capsules, ready to threaten everything they thought they understood. 

Hakyeon took one of Taekwoon’s hands, and she kissed her thumb before holding her hand there, keeping her fingers to her lips. They already felt so frail.

“There’s nothing else we

**◄◄**

touch me, don't.”

“Taekwoon, god,” Hakyeon said, sighing in frustration. “For God’s sake, please, just come to bed at least, yeah?”

Taekwoon clutched her head in her hands, seated on the floor, sparkling silver heels still crushing her swollen toes and skirt hiked halfway up her ass. Her jean jacket smelled like cigarette smoke and sweat and beer, and Hakyeon thinks about nine years ago when she used to raid Taekwoon’s house and rearrange her baby brother’s alphabet magnets to spell _too chic 2 live_ on her fridge and laughed at her own genius for hours, about nine hours ago when she found Taekwoon’s sticky note that read _pay the hydro you idiot_ on her vanity mirror, next to a polaroid of them at some baseball game together, the same woman, yet two people, one of them buried so deep inside the other now that it was unlikely they’ve ever met. 

“You were right about Hongbin,” was all Taekwoon said. “Shouldn’t have gone to that one.”

“What’s wrong with you?” Hakyeon asked, even though her heart was pumping too fast, because she could see that Taekwoon’s lipstick was all over her chin and there were tell-tale bruises blossoming like poisonous green flowers on the delicate skin of her inner forearm. Hongbin was of the odd sort, in Hakyeon’s opinion, and she hadn’t been pleased to learn he was the co-worker in question throwing a work party, of which Taekwoon was extended the invitation. 

She’d felt uncertain sitting this one out, watching Taekwoon leave in the dress Hakyeon got her, a dress way too short. A dress that was supposed to be meant for her eyes alone. It’ll hug your ass, were Hakyeon’s exact teasing words when she’d first presented it, which of course had earn her a punch in the arm, but Taekwoon had always been appropriately modest with herself, so that the things that teased Hakyeon were the dip of her collarbones and the sweep of her fingers around a coffee mug. So what was it that had happened, then, for her to put this tiny little piece of fabric on for someone else?

Taekwoon shook her head a little. “I don’t remember. I don’t

**►►**

can’t have sex anymore.”

Hakyeon just sat there, speechless, disbelieving. She couldn’t move. 

“I have AIDS,” Taekwoon said. “I’d blacked out in front of the convenience store yesterday. It’s why I didn’t come home. Thought it was a bad crash when I woke up in the hospital, but they didn’t let me leave. Said something showed up in the tests the doctor wanted to talk to me about. Then two came in, a man and a woman. Stood far away from me with masks on their faces and said I tested positive for HIV.”

“Did you fuck Hongbin?”

The words flew out of her mouth before they’d fully formed in her own brain. Or maybe they were formed, had actually been this way for a while, just sitting and waiting in the back of her mind, a malicious shadow poorly locked away, waiting for the first opportunity.

Taekwoon looked her in the eye. “Not. Not that I know. I don’t know.”

“ _What?_ ”

“But I remember—he was cooking something. There was this awful smell like sulphur burning, but I...must’ve said something. He only had one needle.”

“Fuck,” Hakyeon said, burying her face in her hands. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

“The doctor said I have forty days. You understand what I’m saying, don’t you? I can’t sleep with you again. They’re calling it the gays’ disease.”

Hakyeon didn’t respond. She was burning, it seemed, not the vicious kind that spread, but the slow kind, a match to the corner of a rolled-up newspaper, flesh curling up and charring black and dusting up and wisping away in curls of thin grey smoke until there was nothing left of her to burn.

She felt hands on her wrists, Taekwoon on her knees in front of her and forcing Hakyeon to look at her with nothing between them. “Do you believe me?” she asked.

Hakyeon almost laughed, the beginning of a dry self-deprecated bark catching in her throat, but she had no energy left. The girl she first met wouldn’t have needed ask. “No,” she said. “I don’t.”

**❙❙**

**◄◄ ◄◄**

** •  
**

“Life’s easier to contemplate, I think, when you’re running out of it,” Taekwoon said.

“I can imagine.” Hakyeon watched as Taekwoon tried the ring on her middle finger first and found it didn’t fit, put it on her index finger and then slid it back off again just to make sure it wouldn’t get stuck. Hakyeon remembered her daddy saying he couldn’t take his wedding ring off even if he wanted to, cause he’d gotten fat over the years and then his finger was too big for the ring to even wiggle anymore. Probably going to cut the circulation right off one day.

“It sounds dangerous.”

“It is. People are dropping like flies to a bug zapper, my daddy says. All over the papers, all over the world. It’s the new chicken pox.”

Taekwoon didn’t have a response to this. Hakyeon got up and clambered over the armrest of the chair until she was shimmying her way in between the cushions and Taekwoon’s back. It used to annoy Taekwoon to no end, it probably still does, except now Taekwoon’s likely given up trying to say anything.

“You wouldn’t do anything stupid to get infected, right?” Hakyeon said, pushing Taekwoon’s hair aside so it wouldn’t tickle her nose and resting her chin on the other’s shoulder.

Taekwoon lifted her hand, the one with Hakyeon’s ring on it, extended her arm out to see how it looked from afar. The two of them regarded the engravings on the silver band quietly, its glint faint in the light streaming in through the window. 

“Not unless you do,” Taekwoon said.


End file.
